three days ago would have signaled my 12th anniversary of moving to NYC. today i found this draft from September 16th, 2012 (written just a month shy of my 9th anniversary of moving to NYC). in a month, i will be back in NYC, briefly, after having expanded out into the world and living in all kinds of places and spaces.

in celebration of all these anniversaries, of a great love and struggle with numbers and time, and of breaking down the very notion of time itself, herein contains the post. it comes from the future, about the past, and, i don’t know about you, but somehow all this time travel puts me right here in the present.

“It’s an empty city block…And wanting to make the place that everyone can be in and join the work in some way. And thinking about: What are those experiences that allow us to fall open to something? What allows us to become receptive? To pay attention? And all of the modes of attention that we can form…The responsibility of thinking about the nature of public gatherings and what are the opportunities to gather in public? How do we retain a sense of our individual presence and yet join to something larger?”

for most of my life, i had this issue that i thought was a problem: it is really hard for me to focus on one thing at one time.

in school, i had an equal passion for English, Science, Math, History, Photography, and Art classes. they all engaged me in learning. and despite feeling dorky, i liked that.

in sports, i couldn’t just play one thing and excel at it. i had to dance, do gymnastics, play tennis, softball, soccer, field hockey, lacrosse, run track, and i even played “Powderpuff Football” the year that i found out it existed. when i heard that there was a girl on the wrestling team at Pinelands High School in the neighboring town, i begged my parents to let me try out. it wasn’t very often that they flat-out refused to support my wild interests, so i let them have that one. i started skateboarding instead. i tried out for the bowling team, but didn’t make the cut. woops. so i joined the intramural volleyball and swim clubs in my spare time. (which, given this list, i am wondering how i had any of that.) when i got older and started hanging out with the surfers, i would go out whenever someone would let me use their board. i loved to be in constant movement in its myriad of forms.